This year the Woodland Trust set up it’s first ‘Varsity Volunteers’ group for students of Exeter and Plymouth Universities, aimed at offering nature conservation opportunities on Dartmoor, meaningful practical work experience and a platform for networking for students. Rosy Stanesby, who attended all of the events has written a blog about her time with the group: I have had the awesome experience of becoming a Woodland Trust Varsity Volunteer this winter. With a fantastic bunch of people, we have madeRead more
Posts filed in: Management
Ashes to Ashes – What next for the Tree of Life?
“Yggdrasil, the World Tree, grew on an island surrounded by the ocean, in the depths of which the World Serpent lay. This ash tree’s trunk reached up to the heavens, and its boughs spread out over all the countries of the Earth. Its roots reached down into the Underworld. A squirrel ran up and down the tree carrying messages from the serpent gnawing at the roots to the eagle in the canopy, and back. A deer fed on the ashRead more
A Focus on Lichens and What They Need
The East Dartmoor National Nature Reserve (NNR) is special for many things, and one of them is lichens. Therefore, we were very fortunate that as part of the Festival of NNRs Granite Elements held an exhibition titled ‘Focus on Lichens: a Weekend of Art and Science‘ on 11th and 12th June at The Woodland Centre situated in Yarner Wood. Please see the summary by Clare Benson (Granitite Elements). “Lichens are all around us, but are easily overlooked. This exhibition wasRead more
Beautiful Butterfly
Yarner Wood, Bovey Valley and Trendlebere Down, located within the East Dartmoor Woods and Heaths National Nature Reserve, are fabulous hotspots for butterflies! Yarner Wood was one of the first sites to take on the annual recording of butterflies back in 1976, when the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme began. https://ukbms.org/methods Volunteer butterfly surveyors walking the Yarner Wood transect The ‘transect walk’ is quite an undertaking, requiring surveyors to walk a fixed route, in good weather, on a weekly basis betweenRead more
Pullabrook Patchwork Management
Pullabrook Wood nestles in the Bovey valley to the east of Dartmoor and maintains an intriguing combination of woodland types that are home to an important range of wild species, though this patchwork of diverse habitat isn’t totally natural. As you walk around the tracks that cut across steep slopes you may find yourself in a broadleaved coppice of native trees, followed by another, larger coppice of pure sweet chestnut. Then, on the high ground, there is a zone ofRead more
Layers of Time – A Moorland Conservation Story
Peat deposition on moorland is known to be one of the most effective forms of carbon storage, or ‘sequestration’. In its undisturbed state, peat is also a haven for unique and important wildlife but, around this priceless landscape lie layers of history and stories of human endeavour. Prehistory has been captured where the earliest farmers left signs of stone enclosures on Dartmoor that gave way to medieval field systems and villages. In one particular windswept spot, high above Ivybridge, theRead more
East Dartmoor Woods blog 